rohitj's domain

All 7 IITs in India and IISc joined together to open their course materials so that people could use them. IITs and IISc are the best technical schools in India and are pretty much world renowned. They have started collecting course materials in the form of slides. The slides can be accessed from http://nptel.iitm.ac.in . Its still an on going process, and it will take time to have course materials for most of the courses. But its surely an awesome initiative. Now, they have also started uploading lecture videos. I don’t think they are actual classroom lectures, I think its all staged. But I think it will still be helpful.

These institutes got Google’s help to get the videos uploaded on youtube. All videos can be accessed from http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=nptelhrd

For more details see the IITK site here .

So, I got to see this youtube video. Actually I saw the actual version of the video, but you can find it in the youtube link. It talks about some habbits while using Vim. These are not some very techy stuffs, but it talks about some basic tricks and tips which can make you use while using Vim as your editor. I found some of the tricks very useful. Specially the use of the “Ctrl+N”.

Yes, I can also see some changes on my site. I wanted to try this before I decide somethings. Advertisement is a big business no doubt. I could see the power of this business within a day. I hope to see more things. For internal news, stay tuned. haha…

2007 was overall good. I got to learn lots of things, and got to do lots of things. Got to talk to lot of cool people. Though I wouldn’t forget that it also brought 7th semester which was like the most difficult semester I ever had. This semester probably took my anxiety level to top. Some of the highlights of 2007 are below:

1. Got a job at Microsoft, India. I am excited about it.
2. Got involved into Free Culture activities.
3. Shifted 99% to open source softwares. (flash )
4. Shifted 100% to free songs. (though, this is true.)
5. Shifted to wonderful KDE. I will write an entry for it.
6. No more Gentoo, it takes time. Ubuntu on other hand is wonderful. (Apologies to all those who are on Gentoo or are thinking of shifting to Gentoo because I asked them to do so. )
7. Hiking
8. Another hobby now is Photography …. need money to buy DSLR.
9. Bought a new web space to play with different things. Its been wonderful till now.
10. Zeropage removed restrictions from their songs.
11. Kelly Allyn sent me her autograph, need to go home to get it.
12. Met some wonderful people during internship at Virginia Tech.
13. <compressed because its personal>

Hopes from 2008 :

1. Grad School or a good job (or a startup?)
2. DSLR
3. Free Culture Club at IITK
4. Passing IITK
5. openmoko / android
6. make IITK music club release an album under CC ( www.tempostand.com should help us)
7. Finish talk with Vox Populi guys

I have been thinking about business models for open source softwares. Though I couldn’t come up with proper answer. Lets see, let me try to start with different software people make and use.

Office : No doubt it needs very big amount of work. And if someone puts this much effort to make an Office package, why will he give it away for free? Of course not, it doesn’t make sense. Probably thats the reason why we do not have any open-source Office software. And surely Microsoft Office is way too good. OOo is dumped for long time now.

Matlab, Visual Studio etc : Again it requires big amount of investment and hard work. No reason one should give it away for free. Though yeah Eclipse is there. And I must say that it is very good. But isn’t it a way in which IBM is earning publicity? And isn’t it same with netbeans as well.

Computer Games : Again too much work and proficiency.

Operating System : Again, do you think open source can help make an Operating System any better? Oh yeah, bug fixing.. probably yes, but without incentive why will someone do quality work? Every second day one thing or another is broken. But yeah surely, like Redhat is doing, good things are possible with it, specially for server side technologies.

Other Desktop Applications :  Amarok, they are fighting to get funds… Is there any good voice chat client? Ekiga? does support proxy. Skype? no more an open source project. Gaim? not yet. Now don’t say that they are fighting in reverse engineering and other bullshit. Firefox? don’t you know that people start with Firefox but do not stick to it for long time. Thats a popular observation, isn’t it. Evolution? I wish they come up with something good. Though I guess they are also having problems (because of open source nature? I guess yes.)

I am not saying that open source is right or wrong. But at the end of the day, what a user wants is good software, softwares in which he need not be a geek to solve the problem. And surely as of now, I do not see open source work to give any good  reply to this need. You may say that Gutsy is a solution, or fedora 8 is awesome, and these distros solves most of the problems. But don’t you think you have been giving these arguments for last 20 years? When fedora 5 came, everyone said the same. When fedora 6 came same. And same goes with Ubuntu.

Its a great pleasure to announce that Tata guys have come up with a supercomputer which is ranked 4th fastest in the world, and fastest in Asia.

I am happy for 2 reasons

1. that India did it again. (remember param2000?)
2. that the computer uses Linux

Tata is the only company that has maintained its reputation for long time now. Even when TCS is criticized sometimes, Tata has maintained its reputation. Those who do not know, Tata’s most of the money goes to charity work. I am using the word “goes” not “will”. I love this group.

For more details check the original post.

In my post about google products, I had shown my wish to have a desktop application for calendar which should sync it’s data with an online server so that I will not have to open browser to see calendar, and I will be able to see calendar even if I do not have my laptop with me.

Now, in software engineering course, we are asked to make a software using different software engineering techniques. And I could persuade my project partners to work on this dream calendar. Mainly the calendar will have following properties :

1. API for making desktop application and web application. First release will have API for perl only. (will serve both desktop and web application )
2. All normal calendar things
3. The software will be under GPL.
4. Others will be able to change your calendar, if you have given them permission.
5. others will be able to send you a request to add an entry in your schedule, like your friend may want you to attend a meeting, (s)he can put an entry for that in your calendar, but you have to accept that request so it finally appear in your schedule.
6. We are trying to understand how iCal works, once we understand that, we will try to include iCal as well, so that you could use current softwares which supports iCal. (iCal is RFC standard for calendars, that means I can freely use it. right?)
7. As of now, if iCal doesn’t make sense, we will have our own thing, for now we are calling it oCal.
8. I will run this server on my web server, so if you others wouldn’t have a server to sync their data, they should be able to do that.
9. We are thinking of including some plugin system as well, so users could modify the calendar functionalities, though we are looking at how different plugin systems works
10. Current status of the project can be seen at http://rohitj.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=software_engineering_project

If you think you want a particular feature in the calendar, let me know. We want to know what users want.

So, you are a geek. You want to write lot of technical things on your wordpress blog. And since you are a geek you want to write technical things in Latex. How do you do? One way is that you write latex code, make pdf, take screenshot, pick the desirable part, and use that image on blog. Ofcourse thats inconvenient and surely doesn’t go with your nerd personality. You want to write Latex code in your blog post. Here are 2 solutions. One is that you use wp-latex plugin. Using this plugin you will be able to write proper Latex code in your blog using <latex></latex> tags. But the problem is that this plugin uses Latex, which is not usually supported by web hosts, including Bluehost. And installing tetex locally is painful. So, here comes the second solution. Use mimetex. Checkout http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mimetex.cgi?l_2 . Similarly you can get other latex output by replacing l_2. One guy used this property and made a plugin. Using this plugin you can use latex code, basically mimetex (which is a bit different from Latex) with <tex></tex> tags. I couldn’t get it working. Another guy changed this script and made it working with \[tex\]\[\/tex\] tags. It didn’t work as well. This new plugin downloads this image and stores in wp-content/cache folder. But it downloads this image every time someone opens the post. Of course it consumes lot of server and bandwidth. So, I made a small tweak in it. I replaced it’s 15 lines with 1 line. Basically, now instead of downloading the image, it puts src as http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mimetex.cgi? blah blah. And see I am able to use latex code.

Enjoy

Update : You can download the plugin (after my modification) from Plugin for using Latex

Update2 : The plugin is under GPL.

Update3 : So, the code I changed was suggested by Nitin Munjal. You can find him here

http://www.pclaunches.com/software/olympic_committee_chooses_xp_over_vista.php

What Google services have you used?

I have used the followings :

Search Engine : Its awesome. Does some one has any doubt about it?

Reader : Well, I recently started using Google reader. I have not used other readers, but I had once made an rssfeed reader. Well, if someone will give me an option, I will use my rssfeed reader. My rssreader was made on .net framework (mercy, please). I have not tested it on Mono. Surprising my thunderbird on Fedora doesn’t give me option for “news and rss” account. And anyways, thunderbird sucks for networks with proxy. My rssfeed reader has proper proxy support. But the point is that I want my data on net, so that I could access it from anywhere. But at the same time, its a bit inconvenient as well.

Calendar : Currently, I am using Google Calendar. I mainly use it to keep track of the money transactions and birthdays. I don’t use it that frequently. It’s not worth seeing online calendar. I want desktop application and online application both. I don’t think google calendar can be a solution. Whats going in Evolution? Really, Office Outlook is far too good for this purpose.

Documents : I don’t prefer it. It’s very slow.

Photos : Picasa is good. I do not have doubt about it. But Gallery2 and digikam combo is better. Both are free. Its working fine on my site. rohitj.net/photo . I will write a separate review on it.

Blogspot : Well, I have shifted from blogger to WordPress. I did not have any problem with blogger. Blogger was equally good except the fact that there was this blue colored strip at the top of the page which didn’t go well with my green theme.

Groups : I have used 2 google-groups now. The good thing in google groups is that you can make a group which will be all email based. So, you don’t need to go to a site to see posts and to write anything. Thats cool. No advertisements, nothings. I don’t think phpBB has this email feature.

Orkut : Those who don’t know about it, orkut is like facebook. Let’s try to compare facebook and orkut. In facebook, one good thing is the privacy it gives you. Others can not see your profile unless they are your friends or you have tried to communicate with them. You can add so many photos. In orkut you can just add 12 photos. Though you can give your picasaweb address. Tagging on photo is cool in facebook. Orkut doesn’t have this application system, which is good. Facebook is so full of these silly applications. Facebook has Indox, which is good. Groups in orkut are cool. Orkut groups make you use them. Some groups are really active. Overall, I think facebook is better.

gmail : I have used yahoo and hotmail as well. I think gmail is better. Well, the user interface is no doubt sucky. There is no option for user made folders. Labeling thing isn’t cool. Hotmail is better for this purpose, but its too heavy. But Google spam filter is awesome. I get like 10 spams everyday. It filters it properly. In my Indox, I rarely see any spam. And unlike hotmail, it doesn’t delete spams without asking me. Yahoo anyways sucks, so lets not talk about it. I think 1GB is more than enough for a normal person. So, lets not compare space. But there is no IMAP server, thats very bad. POP3 doesn’t work as well. If they will make POP3 work properly, I will start using gmail as my main mail box. Right now, its my school mailbox.

iGoogle : ah, thats not cool. I never found any use of iGoogle.